Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Apocalypse how (and when) - The end-of-the-world in the 2016 Chapman Survey of American Fears

Today might beNational Face Your Fears Day, and one that could be faced is the apocalypse. Or, perhaps that day might have been last week.

The 2016 Chapman Survey of American Fears included five questions about Fear of the End-of-the-world, which are shown on pages 83 and 84 of their detailed results.

The general question was: “Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statements” and those five statements were:

The world will end within my lifetime.The world will end as outlined in the Bible.The world will end due to a world war.The world will end due to a man-made environmental disaster.The world will end due to a natural disaster (such as a comet strike, massive volcano explosion, etc.).

For each question people were to answer with one of the following four levels:

A] Strongly DisagreeB] Disagree C] AgreeD] Strongly Agree

There also was a category of Refused for those who did not reply to a question.

First let’s look at results for when, that is The world will end within my lifetime. The sum of Agree and Strongly Agree was only 9.7% (just 1 out of 10), while the other 87% said they Disagree or Strongly Disagree. The vast majority of people still expect to die before the world ends.

Next let’s look at results for how - the sum of Agree and Strongly Agree for four statements, which were:

The world will end as outlined in the Bible. 46.1% [47.8%]The world will end due to a natural disaster. 32.1% [33.5%]The world will end due to a man-made environmental disaster. 29.1% [30.1%]The world will end due to a world war. 21.3% [22.0%]

I also listed the Rescaled Percents [shown in square brackets], which were calculated via multiplying by a factor of 100/[100 - Percent Refused]. As outlined in the Bible was the most popular answer, but still fell slightly below a majority.

In a October 23, 2015 blog post titled A Somewhat Haunted World - Paranormal Beliefs in the 2015 Chapman Survey on American Fears, I discussed how just reporting the sum for Agree and Strongly Agree was insufficient and misleading - the sum for Disagree and Strongly Disagree also was highly relevant.

A bar chart shows the sums for how, with Agree (blue) and Disagree (pink). Click on it to see a larger, clearer view. For all four the sum for disagree is larger than that for agree. Percentages range from 50.45 (1 in 2) for as outlined in the Bible to 75.2% (3 out of 4) for due to a world war.

In the October 11th Chapman blog postWhat Aren’t They Telling Us? in a section titled The Consequences of Conspiracy they discussed how:

“Belief in conspiracies is significantly related to agreement with the statement ‘The world will end in my lifetime.’ Belief in the impending end of the world increases steadily with belief in conspiracy theories.”

They didn’t mention that only 1 in 10 Americans agreed with that statement.

The image of a nuclear blast was adapted from one found at Openclipart.

About Me

This blog is about public speaking. The author is Richard I. Garber, ACS, a Toastmaster. From July 2008 to June 2010 he was Vice President-Education for Capitol Club Toastmasters in Boise, Idaho. Opinions expressed on this blog are those of the author alone, and are not the official positions of Toastmasters International, etc.
Richard is retired. He has over twenty years of experience as a consultant on failure analysis (figuring out why things busted or rusted) and a Ph.D. in Metallurgical Engineering & Materials Science.
His email is r_i_garber at hotmail.com

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We don’t necessarily believe what we write, and neither should you. Information furnished to you is for topical (external) use only. This information actually may not be worth any more than what you paid for it (nothing). The author may not even have been either sane (or sober) when he wrote it down and posted it. Don’t worry, be happy.